The present invention relates to home appliances such as refrigerators, dishwashers, and air conditioners. In particular, the present invention relates to authentication of messages transmitted and received between network enabled appliances and a central controller.
Appliances of the past were stand alone devices, operating on their own without cooperation between or communication among other devices. As a result (as one example) great expenditures of time and effort by repair personnel were required to diagnose problems in an appliance and to take corrective action. As another example, the current and proper operation of an appliance generally could not be determined without being physically present at the appliance. Thus, for example, whether or not the gas burner in a stove had been left on could not be determined without physical inspection.
However, remote testing and operation of appliances, even if it were available today, must be carefully controlled. In particular, authentication of messages between, for example, a service center (which may send appliance operation commands, for example) and the appliance (which may respond with status information, for example) becomes important. However, in the past, no authentication technique for appliance communications has been available. Furthermore, no suitable technique has been available for protecting the authentication technique against compromised authentication parameters, such as authentication keys.
A need has long existed in the industry for a mechanism that provides for authentication of remote appliance messages that addresses the problems noted above and others previously experienced.